Y Combinator-backed payments startup Balancedhas closed out a total $3.4 million seed round, thanks to the addition of $2 million in new funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, CollabFund, and a bunch of angels.
The funding is somewhat strategic, as the startup is looking to help leverage the expertise of the investors involved to help grow its payments business for peer-to-peer marketplaces. On the Andreessen side, for instance, the funding was led by general partner and former PayPal president Jeff Jordan. And investment via CollabFund could help it to get in front of other companies that are part of that firm’s portfolio.
That’s important, because Balanced was built to help marketplace companies like TheFancy, Kitchit, CrowdTilt, Copious, and Zaarly manage payments between two different sets of users. On the one hand there are buyers, for whom Balanced provides white-label payment processing. And on the other hand there are sellers or service providers that marketplaces need to make payouts to. In between there are various rules and regulations that Balanced needs to keep track of, and the company provides services like fraud prevention and holding funds in escrow while waiting for goods or services to be delivered.
